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Racists Attack Muslim RepublicanSyed Mahmood is used to public life. He knew that any Muslim who ran for office after Sept. 11 was going to catch some flak. But even this streetwise politician was thrown off balance by the virulence of the anti-Muslim malice that landed on his congressional campaign this fall.
It began shortly after Aug. 17, 2002, when Syed, a Republican, put up campaign signs in his race to replace incumbent California Democrat Pete Stark. The 13th congressional district includes Fremont, Union City and Newark, and has a large Asian American population. It is home to a sizeable Afghan American community known to locals as "Little Kabul." No sooner had the signs gone up than someone began to deface them. Then the phone calls and e-mails began. Even in an age that has brought out widespread hate, the messages to Syed's office stand out. "We don't want any Turbanheads running for government in this country," the first one began. "Take your signs down. You Raghead!" The slurs, laced with obscenities, intensified as the messages continued: "No camel jockeys in the government of the United States," one writer warned. Another railed against "stinky, uncircumcised, hair growing out of your earlobes, sand n---ers." Syed had never seen such venom in his 30 years of public life. He became worried about the safety of his campaign workers, and called the Newark Police, who are investigating the calls and e-mails as hate crimes. DETERMINED TO FIGHT BACKLASHOn a personal level, Syed says that, although he is appalled he is "surprisingly, not angry. I felt sorry [for his critics]. These people make themselves miserable by their hate for others." Syed is a man who defies stereotypes. He is a marketing specialist, was a Bush delegate to the convention in Philadelphia, and is a player in state Republican politics. Yet at the core of his political beliefs is a deep commitment to social and economic inclusion. Syed works to persuade Muslims and Arab and Asian Americans to enter mainstream politics. "We need people from all over the world and ideas that are not necessarily part of the mainstream," he says. Few Muslim politicians share his general optimism, at least this year. Only 70 Muslims are running for office at any level of government nationwide this year, according to the American Muslim Alliance-down from 700 two years ago in a staggering 90 percent drop. The attacks have not fazed Syed, who is an American by choice, not birth. Born in India and raised in Pakistan, he came to the U.S. in 1969, when he was 24, and graduated from Armstrong College in Berkeley. "I am not discouraged. The more of this hatred I see, the more I am determined not to let it happen again," he says. American culture, Syed notes, "is changing." He intends to be part of that, and to move it in a direction that benefits everyone. No amount of backlash, he says, will change that. Bob Cuddy is the lead writer of Caught in the Backlash, a new publication of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California (www.aclunc.org), from which this story is reprinted. |
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